1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to electrical power supplies, including apparatus and methods for providing a variable resistance to test such power supplies.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electrical power supplies are used in a variety of applications in the field of electronics. If a power supply is not performing as desired, it may damage electrical components to which it is connected. Thus, it may be desirable to verify the performance of an electrical power supply before or after using that power supply for its intended application. This verification may involve providing a variable load to the power supply and assessing the response of the power supply.
One known device for testing a power supply is a decade box. A decade box generally requires manual switching to adjust the load provided for the power supply. However, decade boxes are generally not designed for high-power applications, so their use is limited. Furthermore, even if decade boxes could be used for a wider range of applications, significant user input would be required to test a single power supply at several voltages due to the manual switching design of decade boxes.
Other manually-switched variable-load devices are also known in the art. For example, a potentiometer may be used to test a power supply. However, like decade boxes, potentiometers are generally not designed for high-power applications, and thus have limited use. Furthermore, also like decade boxes, significant user input would be required to use a potentiometer to test a wide load range for a power supply, and control over the load may be imprecise.